take the sport seriously

[Darren]

I have been a fan of strongman events since I was a kid. I'm 33 now.

I remember watching Geof Capes competing years ago and couldn't wait for the strongman events on the telly. At the time I had no idea about where these strongmen came from or how they got to be on telly.

The events would start, not much of an intro, no explaination of all the heats that took place before the televised finals. I imagined that they all drank in the same pub and just decided to have a comp!

I've followed the sport as best as possible over the years watching all the greats, Geof, Jamie, Gary, Glen, Mark (R.I.P, a tragedy) Juko, Manfred and of course, the vikings! (sorry for any i've missed)

But now i'm older and wiser, something is bugging me. WHEN WILL THIS SPORT BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?

I've just been on the BBC sport website and searched for 'strongman', 'BSM', 'Britains strongest man', worlds strongest man'

nothing! not a mention! 0 results found!

Is it because certain people see strong men as not sport but some kind of circus side show. To be fit in between the bearded lady and the tatood man?

Sports that ARE taken seriously and, in my opinion are given far to much airtime include:

Golf (hitting a small ball with a stick into a hole)
Snooker (see above)
Footbal (22 blokes kicking a sack of air around a field for 90 minutes)
Rugby (30 bigger blokes doing the same as above)
tennis (2 or 4 people hitting a ball at each other with snow shoes)
horse racing (midgets in satin pyjamas getting paid to sit on a horse)
and, on sky, wrestling (bodybuilders and big lumps in lycra showing to much hairy crack and worse acting than Crossroads)

Strongman events are as old as the human race. A group of men and more lately women (good on them!) showing their skills in the most basic way possible. Shear strength!

Let's try and get these big corporations to treat the events as serious sport. That will get more people interested as fans and as athletes and maybe oneday we will have another Britains as worlds strongest.

I'm off now, but there's this thing on the telly, 6 dogs, wearing coats run round in a circle trying to catch a stuffed rabbit!

sport? I don't think so!

[Ben]

It is quite unbelievable that some footballers earn more in a day than the prize for winning WSM, when the dedication and level of training involved is much greater (how many strongmen would go out on a piss-up the night before competition?). The sport itself is surely one of the noblest, to be able to say you are the strongest man in the world is one of the greatest achievements. However, the only problem with it is public perception, the concept not limited to strongman but to anyone who is muscular, that they must have achieved it through a thingytail of drugs and hormones, and that if they chose to take these they would be able to achieve the same. I am a lean 16 stone, but I have never taken any form of supplements, I have just eaten my way there; yet even my closest friends (more out of some misplaced concern, than maliciously), who should really know better, have asked me if I use steroids, because they go to the gym and throw a few weights around every now and then , but don't get anywhere (yet they still think they train 'hard'). It is just down to their misconceptions; I am surprised there have not been more documentaries showing the actual level of training that is done - although it would be very offputting having someone film you as you train. Anyway just my thoughts on the matter.

Ben

[Carl]

I agree with Darren , I am 31 now and my experince is simular.
As a child i would have given my right arm to train/compete in events like Geof, Jamie or Gary, in my local area of Manchester i could find many Football,Golf, or Tennis clubs but no gyms that could set me on my way to become W.S.M (ok a little out of my leage) .
now with the invention of the internet i can contact other pepole with simular intrests. My thanks and well wishes to pepole like Philip J Wright lets hope we can reach out to sponcers and T.V companies to bring in more fans ,I am positive there are more out there ,Mabe even one who will open a gym in Manchester/Warrington area!!. ;D ps sorry for any spelling problems i dont know how to use the spell check

[TheRealGymShady]

8-)What i find hard to believe is there has been no interest from a big league promoter the likes of Barry Hearne who has taken to promoting poker on tv this would generate quite a bit more interest in the sport and get more people chomping at the bit to have a go , i mean come on what would you rarther watch a table full of blokes playing cards or a gathering of the strongest men on earth slugging it out on a regular basis instead of just twice a year i know my preference

[BIGGUNS]

I am a keen lifter of weights too.........started 12 years ago when 11.5 stone and am now a lean 17.5 stone. In my job as a Bank Regional Manager i too get all this crap about steroid taking and have even been advised that my size gives the image of being a "thug" which in part has led to me being overlooked for promotions !! saddly this is the image i feel bodybuilders and strongmen have to put up with......which will only change when the numerous events that take place - both bodybuilding and strongman acutally get prime coverage. Am i alone in thinking that Britain is in a minority here... take the strongman and Highland games shows........when i look around the crowd - most are from Europe...they are well versed and appreciate the dedication the contestants put in and applaude their feats..........but the lack of media interest means the Brittish public have not been given the chance to experience a True sport....all we can do is continue to compete and attend the events on offer....and perhaps if the organisers even phone their local papers/tv stations to come along..take some snaps/interviews etc we might make some movement forward....lets continue to believe in OUR sport..

[Darren]

Completely agree mate.

A few years ago a very famous british athlete (track) was banned from competing as nandralone was found in his urine sample. This man denied all knowledge of how it got there and said that 'it must have been in a food suplement'.

What a load of bo*****s! These people are paid, professional athletes and if they honestly don't know what 'supplements' they are taking, they should be banned from sport for life for being ignorant.

During the tour de France a couple of years ago, an entire team was thrown out for using a substance that allows your blood to hold more oxygen and therefore increases endurance.

Yet with both of these sports, it is never taken for granted that the athletes are using substances but the ignorant masses assume that anyone over a muscular 16 stone is on the gear!

I agree this has probably got a lot to do with why no one wants to promote strength events but are there any sports that are steroid free?

O.K. chess DOHHH!!!!!!

[Ben]

Part of improving understanding of the sport, would be be showing people how strongmen train, how much effort they put in, how much it hurts. The first question a lot people ask you about training is 'how often you do you train?', I spend as little as a hour a session, 3/4 times a week actually under the bar, when people hear this, they can't understand why they have been going to the gym three times a week for an hour or so and are not of a similar standard. They just can not understand what 'hard' training is the intensity, if they were to see some of the big guys on the verge of being sick or passing out after a set, or really fighting to get the last rep out on a heavy set, they might get some idea. On a similar note here is an extract from Andrew Raines' athlete page on the website:
'Stumpy trains at Jamie Reeves (Worlds Strongest Man 1989) gym in Sheffield and told us that Jamie dosnt let him stop training until he’s sick!', personally I feel like I am going to be sick I stop, but it takes a hell of a lot of will-power to train right through it.
Ben

[Darren]

Yeah, there was a good documentary about WSM on BBC1 a few months ago but as usual it was shown at about 23:00.

At the moment, Britain (Scotland) has the 2nd strongest woman on the planet! But go up to anyone on the street and ask them if they know this fact. Even if they do (which I doubt) ask them if they know her name (Jackie Young).

Yet the majority of the public can probably name at least 25% of the English football team which haven't been at the top since '66 and can at best be described as very average for an international side.

Darren

[Darren]

This is a true story:

Last year I took the family (wife & 2 young daughters) to the Hafan Y Mor park in North Wales to watch the BSM.

It was advertised as being filmed over 1 week at the park. When we arrived (after travelling from London) we were given a tatty, old, badly photocopied peice of paper with times and locations of events.

We then discovered that the competition was not being hosted at the park as previously advertised but at various points within a 20 mile radius (Caernarfon, Cricieth etc). So, the true fans of the sport, some who had travelled many miles (we drove 324 miles to get there!) had to travel about on a day to day basis once they got there.

The events then took place in open areas like car parks where anyone could just turn up and no one was guaranteed a view of the athletes.

And to top it all off we had a challet next to Dougie Edmunds (he's the tall referee with the black hat that you see on TV). THAT MAN CAN SNORE! I didn't sleep for a week!

Now if you turned up at Cardiff to watch the FA cup and you were then told that the 1st half was now going to be played on Hackney marshes and the 2nd half on Woolwich common you would not be happy! so why do we have to put up with it.

I would gladly pay money to watch a good strongman event if it was run properly at a specified venue. Why should the premier event in the country be run like this?

TELEVISION!

The producers obviously think that it makes good TV if they have a few different backdrops to the events. The fans of the sport, and I suspect the athletes as well, could not give a toss about what the scenery looks like.

Let the strongman events be run by IFSA and the camera's simply film the event.

I think the FA cup would make better TV if they played it on a pitch laced with paintball landmines!

Darren.

[if it helps]

ben i igree with what you say ,see it throughto go further in lifting events,.just looking at the weights saying ,i can't do that, means you wont.but having a go and being sick afterwards means you gave it your all and you wasn't ready for that weight then and work on inproving . good luick

[Ben]

Cheers,
I find that so long as I have complete concentration I don't think negatively, but the trouble is sometimes if I have a lot of stuff on my mind, then it is easy to just lose focus for a moment and I miss the lift. I am trying to sign up for the British Powerlifting Qualifiers at the moment to give myself something to really focus for and get used to competing. My ultimate goal is strongman competitions, I have some homemade kit in my back garden I use when I feel I need a change for a a couple of sessions. But I want to work on building up a good basis of strength first, although I am training for powerlifting I am still training my whole body to get a good all round strength base.
Ben

[jason]

Hi Ben, are you going to join bwla? i think they have the largest number of powerlfters than any other UK powerliftiing federation lots of info on www.weights.demon.co.uk

[Ben]

I am trying to join up, I have sent an email to Kevin Jane who is supposed to be in charge of the East Midlands region, but it is all quiet on that front. I am going to go to a Gym in a the next town soon and intend he BWLA though them, I have heard that the qualifiers are in December from a man named Stuart Hamilton, so I will try and get it sorted by the end of the Summer - they don;t make it too easy though do they.

[Darren]

Has IFSA gone mad?

Jill Mills, the Worlds strongest woman, has been told by Dr Doug Edmunds (IFSA President) to 'prove her fitness' to 'Qualify' for the WSM 2003!

Some of Jill's achievments this year include:

140kg stone @ the Arnold classic
9 reps @ 80kg log lift in Sweden
and winning the U.S.A powerlifting nationals with a score of 1477 over the 3 lifts!

Could it be more likely that Dr Edmunds possible future daughter in law is also a competitor and cannot handle the competition?

I, along with many other people, witnessed Gregor Edmunds throw a chair into the crowd in frustration at the 2002 BSM at failing to complete 1 rep in the squat.
Nothing was said and he was allowed to continue! I am sure that if it had been any other competitor he would have been disqualified for dangerous and unsportsmanlike behaviour.

This favoritism and double standards should not be allowed in any sport.

Let IFSA prove that they are competant to be the governing body of our sport. We get little enough coverage as it is without the sport being torn apart from the inside!

Good luck this year Jill in whatever you choose to do. It's only my opinion but If you don't do the WSW because of this IFSA Bulls*$t, the competition should be considered null and void. How can you take a title from someone that has to prove their ability to compete? Surely you proved that last year!

Darren.

[important]

lots of interesting point above